True, but the fact that the law says premiumscan equal 9.5% of income doesn’t means that employer-sponsored insurance willcost 9.5% of a worker’s pay.

Nevertheless, Yahoo! conjures up a hypothetical employee who will be left out in the cold: “Take, for example, a restaurant worker who makes $21,000 per year. A premium that costs 9.5 percent of this income would run $1,995 for the whole year, or $166.25 per month. How could this employee possibly shell out nearly $2,000 a year for insurance?”

He will have to turn down his employer’s offer, and then the government will demand that he pay a penalty because he didn’t buy insurance!Continue reading →

– Fiction:No doubt, you’ve heard that Obamacare will cripple small businesses, the “engine of job growth in America.” In 2014 employers with more than more than 50 full-time workers will have to provide insurance—or pay penalties. If more than 30 of their workers go to the individual Exchanges and receive government subsidies in the form of tax-credits, the business will have to help cover those subsidies by paying a fine of $2000 to $3000 per employee.

Obamacare’s critics speculate that many employers will stop hiring, so that they have no more than 49 full-time employees.

And 99% of those with more than 50 employees already offer insurance. The employer mandate will affect just a tiny sliver of small companies. Lawmakers understood this when they wrote the legislation.

–Fiction: In 2014, many small employers will trim full-time workers’ hours and we will become a nation of part-time employees. Small business owners know that if they have fewer than 50 full time workers (averaging 30 hours a week) they won’t have to pay a penalty, and their workers can go to the Exchanges where individuals can purchase their own insurance, and receive those generous tax credits.

–Fact: This bit of fear-mongering overlooks the fact then when the government counts “full-time employees” it doesn’t just count heads, it counts hours.The law says that the firm must offer insurance if it has 50 full-time “or full-time equivalent employees.”

Here is how the rule works: If a business has 50 full-time employees working 30 hours a week and cuts 10 back to 15 hours, it will have only 40 full-time employees. But it will have to hire more part-timers to cover holes in the weekly schedule.

Assume the company hires 20 new part-time employees, each working 15 hours a week. Because they will be putting in 300 hours a week the government will count them as ten “full-time equivalents.” Add those ten to the remaining 40 full-time workers, and the company then will have 50 full or “full-time equivalent’ -employees.

The business won’t have to insure the 20 part-timerswho work only 15 hours, but it will have to insure the 40 who work full-time—or pay the penalty..

Obamacare will “keep unemployment high,” Tanner claims, because under reform legislation, businesses that have at least 50 employees working over 30 hours a week are expected to offer their workers affordable health insurance. If they choose not to, and more than 30 of their employees qualify for government subsidies to help them purchase their own coverage, the employer must pay a penalty of $3,000 for each worker who receives a subsidy— up to a maximum of $2,000 times the number of the company’s full-time employee minus 30. (The Kaiser Family Foundation offers an excellent graphic explaining the rule.)